A Letter to Post Columnist Megan McArdle About Her Column on Marriage
"It's the Feminism, Stupid!"
Dear Ms. McArdle,
I respectfully ask that you take the time to read this letter about your recent article in The Washington Post, Children will benefit if we face this fact: Married parents are ideal, and to thoughtfully consider what I say here.
As a brief introduction, I’m a proud lifelong reader of the Post who has long noticed the paper’s gender bias, most notably its imbalanced coverage of domestic violence.1
But my pride in the Post finally turned to shame in 2018 after the paper published two undeniably gender-biased articles: Why can't we hate men? and Amber Heard’s shameful op-ed. Since then, I’ve been sending letters to Post columnists who have written articles that perpetuate an anti-male bias.
Although your article doesn’t actively propagate the Post’s gender bias – in fact I see from some of your earlier writings that you have a healthy skepticism about feminism2 – I’m somewhat surprised that in your list of “ills that should be identified and boldly named”, you completely overlooked the feminist pink elephant in the room and the obvious cause of the decline of marriage you describe: a relentless, hateful, sixty-year feminist campaign of political, legal, and cultural indoctrination directed against men and masculinity.
Based on your earlier columns, I would guess that you’re aware that one of feminism’s often-stated goals is the destruction of family and marriage, and the removal of fathers from both. Just two of many thousands of pieces of evidence can be found in feminists’ own words or in a consciousness-raising session held by feminist author Kate Millett.
That feminists have largely succeeded can be found by declining rates of marriage (aided by a feminist-indoctrinated media that encourages women to avoid marriage), and increasing numbers of fatherless children, and the risks to these children.
Your article says, “The evidence is overwhelming that the decline of marriage over the past few decades has been very bad for children and, by extension, society.” Do you think it’s just a coincidence that this decline in marriage roughly coincides with the beginning of second wave feminism?
In several of my recent letters to Post columnists, I quote from a book that should be required reading of every member of the Western media: Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream — and Why It Matters. Forensic psychologist Helen Smith perfectly summarized the problem in her book:
“American society has become anti-male. Men are sensing the backlash and are responding. They’re dropping out of college, leaving the workforce, and avoiding marriage and fatherhood at alarming rates. The trend is so pronounced that a number of books have been written about this man-child phenomenon, concluding that men have taken a vacation from responsibility. But why should men participate in a system that seems to be increasingly stacked against them? [emphasis added]
“Most men aren’t dropping out because they are stuck in arrested development; they are acting rationally in response to the lack of incentives society offers them to be responsible fathers, husbands, and providers. In addition, men are going on strike, either consciously or unconsciously, because they do not want to be injured by the myriad of laws, attitudes, and hostility against them for the crime of happening to be male in the 21st century. Men are starting to fight back. Men on Strike explains their battle cry.”
Ms. McArdle, particularly with your acknowledged doubts about feminism, I’m surprised that you don’t recognize that one of the biggest stories of the past half century is staring you right in the face: the assault on the civil rights of men and boys.
A summary of the story you’re missing can be found in my recent letter to Christine Emba in response to her recent “Men are lost” article. It includes discussion of how feminism: is founded on lies, has become a hate movement, propagates “idiot hypocrisy” by telling obvious falsehoods, and briefly describes the damage caused by six decades of feminist lies and indoctrination.
Neither Emba’s quest to “help men” or yours to save marriage can be accomplished without taking a good, hard look at what feminism has become and the widespread damage that it has caused in its wake.
To adapt a well-known phrase, not directed at you personally, “It’s the feminism, stupid!”
This observation was recently confirmed by a February 2023 report by The Coalition to End Domestic Violence that described a 10-Year Suppression of the Truth on Domestic Violence by the Washington Post.
In particular, one Atlantic article, Statistics are a feminist issue, made clear your recognition of how feminists fudge the truth: “There are the appallingly shaky statistics on the number of rapes based on badly designed surveys manipulated with statistical methods so crude that Bayes must be spinning in his grave fast enough to power a high-speed monorail between New York and LA. … The various numbers on domestic violence that are thrown around with abandon even though a moment's thought is enough to dismiss them as ridiculous--the infamous Super Bowl claims being only the worst of the breed.”